Cleo Labs has successfully raised €1.5 million in a new funding round aimed at solving the growing headache of international product regulations. The Paris-based company specialises in helping businesses navigate the complex maze of rules required to sell physical goods across different borders. This investment round was led by Larry Berger and included contributions from Kima Ventures, Financière Saint-James and several high-profile tech figures.
The startup operates in a market where the financial stakes are incredibly high. Businesses currently lose hundreds of billions of dollars each year due to product recalls, fines and blockages at customs. Cleo Labs notes that even a simple item, such as a connected bicycle helmet, must often meet over a hundred separate regulations involving material standards, labelling and safety certifications before it can be sold.
To tackle this, the firm developed an artificial intelligence platform powered by its proprietary architecture known as MARIA. This system continuously tracks data from more than 25,000 regulatory authorities in 106 countries. Each AI-generated report is reviewed by legal experts to ensure the information is reliable. This human-in-the-loop approach allows companies to process regulations ten times faster than traditional manual methods.
Naomie Halioua, co-founder of Cleo Labs, stated: “Our ambition is to transform regulatory compliance — currently seen as a constraint — into a strategic lever for companies. Thanks to AI, it becomes possible to anticipate rather than react.”
The funding follows the company’s recent victory at The Pitch by Deel, where it beat thousands of other startups. Cleo Labs already counts the retail giant Decathlon among its early customers. Anaëlle Guez, co-founder of Cleo Labs, added: “Today, teams still spend considerable time manually analysing complex and evolving regulations, often using spreadsheets or inadequate tools. With Cleo, we enable them to gain speed, reliability, and processing capacity by automating these processes at scale.”
With this new capital, Cleo Labs intends to refine its technology and strengthen its presence in Europe. The founders, who combine backgrounds in engineering and legal transformation, are also laying the groundwork for a strategic move into the United States market.
